


Adjustments

by yeats



Series: hearts and bones [3]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, domestic fic, post-retirement fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 04:12:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11028399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeats/pseuds/yeats
Summary: Ricky wakes up on the living room couch with a crick in his neck and fingers sifting through his hair.“There you are,” Cris says, somewhere just outside his field of vision.





	Adjustments

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aphilologicalbatman (inabathrobe)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inabathrobe/gifts).



Ricky wakes up on the living room couch with a crick in his neck and fingers sifting through his hair.

“There you are,” Cris says, somewhere just outside his field of vision.

Ricky turns to look at him, and regrets it immediately: the muscles in his neck and back seize up, and then Cris drops his hand.

He works his way upright in stages, twisting against the too-smooth leather cushions like a fish on the line. This couch is the only furniture in this part of the house so far, a custom-built piece with the same sleek profile and low center of gravity as an Italian sports car. It's exactly as comfortable as sleeping on top of a Ferrari, too. Cris and the decorators love it, of course; Ricky vaguely remembers a conversation last week about statement pieces and California modernism. It's probably his own fault for not insisting on something that would serve well on a night like this.

Sitting up, he presses the base of his palms into his eye sockets. Rolls out his shoulders one at a time, listens for the click of the muscle snapping over his shoulder blade. Every part of him aches.

"Yes," he says. "Here I am."

Cris is leaning against the sofa arm, his hand braced against the back. He's bare to the waist, a pair of loose-fitting drawstring sweatpants slung low over his hips. He doesn't make another move to touch Ricky.

“Were you looking for me?”

Cris looks at him for a long moment, and when he opens his mouth to speak, Ricky thinks they’re about to get into it again. He can’t even remember what the fight was about this time. He's reminded, the way he often is at unexpected and often unwelcome moments, of their playing days: Cris could never let things go then, either. 

"It's starting to rain," Cris says, which isn't an answer. "I think I left the car windows open."

"What?"

Ricky can't read his expression. When he speaks again, his voice is flat. "I'm going out to check."

"Oh. All right."

Cris steps around the dark shapes of stacked packing boxes, graceful as a ballet dancer. Ricky tracks the even cadence of his footsteps through the hallway to the back of the house. Twice now, Ricky's gotten lost upstairs, taken a wrong turn and found himself in an empty room he doesn't recognize. But Cris never hesitates.

The rain starts up in earnest, hard drops pinging against the deck like coins dropped in a church offering plate. Beyond it, he can just make out the faint television-static roar of the ocean.

It hits Ricky, all of a sudden, how tired he is – not just tired in the way that comes from half a night on a wildly impractical couch in a mostly empty house, but the kind of tired that can't be slept away, the kind that roosts inside of your chest and makes a home there until it starts to push other things out.

Cris comes back inside, his feet squelching. He stops in the doorway. 

"And?"

"Everything's fine." Cris slides a hand over his hair, sending up little mists of water. It'll begin to frizz and curl, soon. "They were already shut."

"That's good." The light streaming in from the newly installed floodlights around the pool spills out across the floor between them, a silvery carpet on the bare hardwood. "What time is it?" he asks, for lack of anything better to say. 

"Almost one." There’s a pause. "Are you coming to bed?"

Ricky's tempted to laugh, though he knows better. It's been ten years since someone asked him that question. The look on Cris's face is exactly the same, too, solemn and wary.

"Do you want me to?" he asks.

If Cris were Carol, they’d be off and running again. She always hated it when he answered the question with another question, used to accuse him of trying to stall for time until he could think up an answer. And sometimes she was right, but more often he already knew the answer, but was just trying not to make things worse.

But Cris isn't Carol. "Of course I do,” he says quietly, shoulder slumping as if in defeat. “You know that.”

He holds out his hand. The light bisects his palm, slashing across just next to his life line.

Ricky takes it, slots their fingers together and uses Cris's weight to heft himself to his feet. "We really need to get a more comfortable couch," he says.

"I like that couch," Cris reproaches. Even now, he's still sensitive about his taste in a way that Ricky never expects. "Plus, if it's too comfortable, you might get used to it out here." His lips turn upward in the sickly, mirthless facsimile of a smile.

Ricky squeezes his hand. "I don't think I could."

Upstairs, Cris crawls back into the tangled heap of blankets on his side of the bed, and Ricky goes to wash up.

As his electric toothbrush whirrs away, Ricky stares at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Three years out from retirement, and age has settled on him in places he didn’t expect: deeper hollows below his eyes, more gray flecked through his stubble. The small white scar on the right side of his hairline from when his brother had thrown a seashell at him, back when they were children together, has vanished almost entirely, scored over by a single wrinkle. There's a plum-colored mark on the underside of his jaw, of much more recent vintage.

Cris has kept the light on for him, but Ricky shuts it and navigates into bed by feel alone. He tugs on a corner of the duvet and the fabric goes lax as Cris uncurls to let him climb underneath.

When he looks over, he's not surprised to see Cris watching him. There's something intent in his eyes, an echo of earlier. He opens his mouth, and Ricky tenses up for what's about to follow -- for them to start this fight again. 

But instead, Cris just says, "I want to say I'm sorry. For pushing." 

"So say it," Ricky says, but gently, stretching out to bump their knees together.

Cris gives a little huff, but he presses his knee back against Ricky's. "It's not my place to try and tell you what to do with your kids. If you want to go visit them in Brazil, rather than have them come here, that's fine. You should make whatever decision you think is best for them. Obviously.”

He says all of this to a spot three inches above Ricky's left ear, studiously avoiding eye contact, and while the exact same kind of avoidance had made Ricky furious five hours ago, it's different in the dark, safe cocoon of their bed. Ricky can feel the minute vibrations in the blankets from Cris tapping his fingers against his side, jittery.

“I do want them to come visit here," he says. "Of course I do. But it's a lot – the house isn't even done--"

"It's almost done," Cris says. "I keep telling you, we don't have that much left to do, and if you just tell me what you like, we can start shifting some of the other pieces…"

"I told you, they all look the same to me, I don't know what you want –" Ricky hears himself getting testy again, feels Cris stiffen beside him. He stops himself, takes a breath. “I don't care if the house is ready when they come. But I know that you do. So we'll wait until you, and Esteban, and Greg, and Rachel, and Mirabelle have finished the work…"

“None of those names are right,” Cris says.

"We'll wait until you're satisfied with it," Ricky continues. "And in the meantime, we'll go to São Paulo, and see the kids, and my parents, and you can stop pretending that you’re not worried that the sconces in the downstairs hallway aren't impressive enough for a couple of teenagers who’ve known you their entire lives, and start pretending not to worry about whether you should have asked my father for my hand in marriage. Which you don’t need to worry about either, by the way." He smiles. "Because I already told them I was the one who proposed."

The exact details of their engagement, particularly the question of who popped the question, have remained a subject of heated debate between the two of them for the last few weeks. But Cris grows quiet, instead of indignant. He looks down at the dark mass of bedsheets wrapped around them, and then back up.

Ricky waits.

"So you want me to come," Cris says. He’s looking at Ricky with the same intense stare he gives fabric swatches, stain samples and detailed interrogations about Ricky’s favored pantry organizational system. Ricky thinks back to the couch, the way Cris had touched him, before anything else. “There you are,” he’d said -- with relief, Ricky realizes. As though he wasn't sure to expect it.

"Cris." Ricky cups his cheek, strokes his thumb along the faint laugh line that's only just started to show in the last year or so. He slides his knee forward, tangling their ankles together. “Of course. Always."

Cris exhales, and just like that, his body relaxes into Ricky's, all the uneven remainders of space between them cleared away. Ricky brushes their lips together, and the sound that Cris makes is so fragile that Ricky parts his lips and kisses him deeper to swallow it, keep it between them. He tips Cris back against the pillows and Cris crooks his leg around the backs of Ricky's knees, pulling him closer, barely willing to allow enough room for Ricky to peel their boxers off.

It’s different from how it was when they were younger -- but then, so is everything else. In those early years in Madrid, Ricky remembers the feeling of carrying their secret around like being a spy with a bomb in his briefcase; the constant awareness that your whole life could be destroyed in an instant tapped into a fear that sung through his veins like pleasure, only sharper and more dizzying. Long after it should have ended (long after Cris probably assumed it would end), Ricky kept coming back, crossing continents and oceans just to swallow Cris's cock down to the base and catch a taste of that fear again on his tongue. 

Now, when Ricky eases Cris onto his back and goes to slide down, Cris catches him, hooking his fingers under Ricky's armpit to keep him in place. 

"Jesus!" Ricky jerks away, ticklish. He nearly knees Cris in the dick.

"Fuck, sorry, sorry," Cris says, sliding his hand down to Ricky's ass and hauling him in closer. "Mm, like this, okay?"

Ricky kisses him in answer, rocking down and wrapping a hand around them both. It's slow until it isn't anymore, and Ricky doesn't close his eyes until the last possible second. 

Afterwards, Cris curls onto his side, and Ricky drapes himself along Cris's back. Tucks his arm into the dip of Cris's still-slender waist, and strokes his fingers along his warm, bare skin. 

"All right?" he says. 

Cris gives a low hum. "Yeah." 

"Good." He noses the tender skin behind Cris's ear. "Of course I'm taking you with me. Who knows what terrible things you'll buy if I leave you alone to your own devices."

Cris's laugh rumbles low and rich in his chest. "Do you really hate the couch?” he asks, voice fuzzy with sleep. Ricky can feel him slowly drifting off, his heartrate and breathing evening out. 

Yes, Ricky thinks.

"No," he says. "Not really."

**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday, dude! shout-out to [Hyb](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyb/pseuds/Hyb) for helping with an earlier draft of this.
> 
> find me being deeply uncool about these two on tumblr [@freekicks.](http://freekicks.tumblr.com/)


End file.
